


arrangements of human shapes and space

by IronCladFeatherFeet (handschuhmaus)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: First Time, M/M, Tender Angst, from heroic objectification to heartbroken adoration, tagged underage because very young teen has a wet dream, there's a tragic element looming too, ultimately king/knight dynamic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:01:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21575686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/IronCladFeatherFeet
Summary: Of all the things--all the peopleAnakin Skywalker has depended upon, Palpatine is the only one neither of them, nor time or the galaxy, has swept away.
Relationships: Sheev Palpatine/Anakin Skywalker, Sheev Palpatine/Darth Vader
Comments: 7
Kudos: 43
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs Exchange 2019





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aurae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aurae/gifts).



> titling this was nearly enough to give me fits; I've ultimately borrowed (and altered by addition of one word) the name of an instrumental off Camera Obscura's first album _biggest bluest hi-fi_ (x)
> 
> (and because "No AUs" is sort of ambiguous for a ship that has very little presence in canon, I've opted for a canon-ish setting where Anidala is present on the stage but in the background, despite "no unrequested ships". Aside from the canon events proceeding from their marriage, it should be readable as friendship.)

The words are still echoing in Anakin’s ears, from Astronavigation class where the Master had released them to develop their own stellar mnemonics, but kept advising the caution any time someone emulated the uniquely bright Vernal Triangle: “ _Any_ three non collinear points form a triangle!” Anakin knows that geometric fact well, and that they define a plane such that anything three-legged has a much better time of balancing. A fourth point, a fourth leg only destabilizes things, hence the wobbly chairs in the waiting room at the temple healer, and the one at Obi-Wan’s desk. 

That’s an awfully silly rationale for not expanding his circle (ha ha) of something-like-friends, but it will do today. There is a perpetual feeling that the Jedi stop short of actually _liking_ him, Obi-Wan (and Qui-Gon, if he counts dead people, who on Tatooine were almost never worth counting.) excepted. Except even Obi-Wan doesn’t like everything about him. But he can lean on the three. There’s Mom, who is so far away she hardly counts, and he hasn’t talked to her in years, there’s Obi-Wan, and there’s ( _somehow_ ) the Chancellor of the whole kriffing Republic, who tells Anakin he may simply think of him as Palpatine. 

They had begun a full-fledged development of three-dimensional coordinates in Math, which was important for things like Astronavigation (which, like most Padawans, Anakin had just started at thirteen), and Anakin supposes that if Obi-Wan and the rest of the Jedi are on the same planar slice, firstly he _isn’t_ , and secondly that Mom and Palpatine must also lie off it, somewhere. Connected only by Anakin, for after all there is no reason for a great politician to concern himself with a slave woman, nor for Jedi to do that (Qui-Gon Jinn, whom he ought to put out of his head again so he doesn’t start _crying_ , was a renegade and, if Anakin wants to be accepted, shouldn’t be emulated.)

There isn’t any clear reason for Palpatine to concern himself with Anakin, either, but the man is very patient, and had even, with a small sad smile, let him cry, handing him the tissues concealed behind his desk. He didn’t used to cry, even when things went really wrong. Weirdly, the Jedi make him soft in ways that had been utterly dangerous as a slave, and work to harden him in ways no slave had wanted to be. But if it was the price of being a hero, the price of freedom…

Anakin tries not to think about whether the Jedi, up close, look as heroic as he always thought.

* * *

It is only that evening that the council sends them, or rather, Obi-Wan over to take an interview from someone in the Senate who was involved in a crime. They are cagey about the details in front of Anakin, and Obi-Wan pauses awkwardly in a nondescript hallway in the lower floors of the Senate building. “Anakin, would you--if he isn’t busy--perhaps like to spend a few minutes with Chancellor Palpatine? I know he has extended an open invitation and well, I don’t think you’d be as welcome as the council seems to think.” The air around him, if perhaps mostly due to their bond, is thick with anxiety and a fragment of a thought about being like Qui-Gon slips out from Obi-Wan’s shields.

Anakin, who does have a good sense of direction, leads the way to the Chancellor’s office, and they ask the evening secretary, a protocol droid, if Palpatine is both in and available. And he is.

Anakin sits down in the chair, and is (as always) offered the piece of candy, and they sit in a companionable silence that he doesn't get much at the temple--perhaps because when he is silent he's supposed to be meditating, and at all other times he's tasked with something or other. Anyway, it reminds him of sitting up with Mom, tinkering, or her doing her sewing, on the scant evening hours they had had together. Already his memories of Tatooine are remote, though. The Jedi don't like him having them, but Palpatine doesn't seem to mind. "Do you ever miss your parents, sir?" he asks, mindful of the fact that someone might come in and disagree with a young Jedi Padawan calling the Chancellor by name.

Palpatine looks up from the pad he has been reading and annotating, and for a moment he looks as if he doesn't quite know what to say. But his face settles quickly, and he says, neutrally, "It has been a long time since they died." As if to please Anakin, he adds "We were not as close as you were to your mother." 

"What was it like having a father?" Anakin asks, while they are on the subject of parents. Palpatine is the only one he can ask this; Jedi think it strange to have parents at all.

Palpatine seems to swallow hard and fixes Anakin with an examining look. "My father... and I did not get along."

And then the Chancellor receives a voice call (Anakin is sensible enough to remain pretty quiet), and by the time that's done, Obi-Wan shows up again, so there is no more to it.

* * *

HE IS BEING arrestingly forthright! Madness in the face of the gravity of all this...necessity. He had once been called Silvertongue by a political associate and that had always sufficed. Should suffice here, aside from adjustments necessitated by his subject being a nine-year-old grown before his time and now a teenager and a Jedi but not entirely exempt from the piquant vagaries of youth all the same.

He is well shielded against attachment--has rid himself of blood relations, of the mentor he had once become attached to, mercilessly of the Zabrak child he had raised from infancy. He will rid himself of Dooku, Tyranus one day, perhaps within the decade, even when the man, once in his confidence, is the closest he has to a friend and equal. That should not be a factor here, attachment. And he can act the part of interest without becoming ensnared, has done so many a time. 

The problem, perhaps--if one studied Cosinga, studied even the late Damask, the forging of a person or an alliance was made all the easier with touches of affection, feigned or otherwise; it made people tractable. (The pain in the recollection is reduced to an intellectual fact: Sidious is _not_ the boy, or the adolescent called Sheev, and Palpatine is now little more than a mask, an act for the grand circus of the Galactic government.) And his human flesh is just slightly too apt to yield to the downward path to confusion created by the boy’s association to the Force he regards with something, all told, not unlike reverence. The Sith, it would seem, generally try to avoid that, but it is surely power enough to invoke awe not so different to terror, as some would speak of gods. 

(had he ever been told not to be covetous? Surely the pronouncement had been hypocritical, but it _could not be helped_ here. Except that--and he _was_ better than Damask for this--to have Anakin relied on keeping the duality in mind, that this great conduit of the Force had taken an entirely human form, with the full human range of emotions. Or at least that was in evidence and the best presumption possible at this point. They would have to be damped; the boy must learn not to be so open-hearted, least he bleed out by it, but the Jedi had already begun that. In exactly the wrong way for Sidious’ liking, mind.)

And none of that should be accomplished via excessive honesty. At this stage, there should be many layers of insurance, that the boy not spill his secrets.


	2. Chapter 2

Anakin has had one or two very vague _dreams_ , involving no particular person whatsoever, and (he had been prepared, everyone said it was understandable) his master. They had been ...erotic. They had not prepared him for the prospect of dreaming of Palpatine, naked. 

Perhaps that was no more unusual than Obi-Wan, only the details of the dreamscape weren’t the undetailed fantasy of its predecessors, where there had been action instead of this foreboding stillness. It might be that a tone was sounding but it was so featureless, literally monotonous, that it seemed no difference than silence. 

And he surveyed the man. His feet were planted firmly on a featureless floor, but seeing his toes and his sturdy calves, dusted with surprisingly dark hair, and his thighs and his hips--the hint of a curve to his buttocks as Palpatine was not quite exactly facing him straight on--the stomach with the slightest paunch, the sleekly muscled arms and even just his forearms, all was strangely intimate, let alone the sight (which Anakin’s brain refused to conjure exact details of) of slightly reddish hair and quite unremarkable penis. 

He has seen grown men, even old men, naked before; modesty is not always a privilege of slaves. There should be nothing so tantalizing about the sight of his _friend_ before him, especially as there is nothing seductive in the posing. But kriff, it was and is. Ironically it recollects to him that in some regards (in dreams he may forget he is now a Jedi) he will, or rather would, one day take a spouse, in all probability. What if--it was him you marry?

He wakes abruptly and is hard, but despite the remnants of the dream, in wakefulness he is convinced it is a bad idea, as of now, to dwell on his dreams of either of those friends. (And Force forbid this ever happen in a dream of Mom!) That he takes care of this still novel inconvenience, and decides to banish the thought doesn’t make a difference, though: he cannot shake the thought of Palpatine naked, and the fact that some part of him wants to try _something._

* * *

THE BOY HAS LEAPT far ahead of any intentions he had had, because he is _projecting that impression_ now that he is in front of him, and looking hungrily at him, old politician that he is. How to deal with this, then, when his heart, that icy stone, feels imperiled by fondness? Unwonted, unwanted instincts, nevertheless long cultivated, scream that to commit the imitation of love that is _reeling this child into his circle_ is a great personal danger.

And to Sidious just now, Anakin is less someone he could ever ...seduce in the more literal sense, more the most majestic tool, as sailors have named their ships since time immemorial, as scientists make pets of their helper droids (if Plagueis is anyone to go by). Nevermind that he has no interest in indiscretions with a teenager, and the risk of legal or psychological consequences damns the stillborn idea.

Suddenly a realization dawns, the human factor clicking back into place. Palpatine has never been the subject of a teenage crush, a first infatuation--why would he have been, unless unbeknownst to some child in his own youth? This is inconvenient, and does not entirely ameliorate the dangers of sentiment, but it is hardly unprecedented. Children (not that he can speak from personal experience), that is to say, adolescents, often get crushes on authority figures; it’s human development 101!

That he _wants_ to imbue the fact and his own recalcitrant feelings with significance does not mean they are.

* * *

THERE IS A FIFTEEN YEAR OLD, taller now than he, arrayed on his sofa in an uncomfortable looking sprawl, and, just as Palpatine is wont, their discussion is shaping up to be essentially philosophy. It is, however, most unlike the active and mechanically minded boy--or so Sidious would have hitherto thought.

“Our teacher says Jedi show love to people throughout the galaxy,” Anakin continues, waving a hand. “But also that it cannot be invested in any one individual. Jedi”--his voice is choked-- “aren’t supposed to be attached.” 

The boy’s face twists up, and the thought wanders through Sidious’ head that at some level, even if this goes right, this is a grand tragedy in the making. Sith are not meant to be attached, either, but with Maul being defined by his expendability, this is the first time he has faced the prospect of perhaps desiring to be exceeded, to be eclipsed by this terribly brilliant boy. It feels _parental_ , which makes his skin crawl. Even so, his heart has already dropped an infinitesimal increment, like a waking dream of falling, or a sudden descrescendo.

Perhaps all his treasonous discussions with Dooku have been lead-up to this fateful point, then, he thinks wryly, and carefully responds “Politicians are not meant to show favoritism either, in their work. But it is only human to seek love, or fall into it.” 

“‘We must transcend our natures to be the luminous beings that we are,’” Anakin answers, as if he is quoting someone--Sidious does not know who. Likely a Jedi, but it sounds as if the boy does not trust him.

“We-ell,” he says, although it is not quite like him--too familiar, too haphazard for the situation, too _honest_ , “in my experience most beings fall short of being luminous.”

“Mine too,” Anakin agrees, and stands. “At least on Tatooine.”

It feels like the encounter has slipped out of Sidious’ grasp, but, peculiarly, he cannot seem to escape from this first and unlikely path that has occurred to him. “I think,” he says in the tones of a confidence, as he might have to a much younger Anakin, “perhaps they lose touch with the galaxy.” 

Anakin shivers, seems indeed very young and smaller than his considerable stature. His voice shakes a little as he takes Sidious’s wrinkled hand and says “I don’t want this friendship to be wrong, Palpatine.”

Odd as it might seem to outsiders that the boy addresses him by that single surname, the syllables still stir him. That does not explain why it feels as if he is granted words by something larger and more universal than he, when he says “Of course, my boy, anyone would want friendship. Perhaps the Jedi are making too much of an ideal. We do not expect most people to do the feats of heroes, nor have their impartial qualities.”

“But I am,” Anakin says, and the lights flicker and go out, and the storm the Weather Authority had to let play out tonight (a _storm_ , thinks Sidious) thunders, so the solemn words are pronounced in the candlelight he had anyway, as he stares at Sidious’s benevolently concerned face, “expected to be a hero. I saved Naboo, I am their ‘Chosen One’.”

“Anakin, my boy--” this is not the time for more manipulative words, so he places his other hand affectionately on the boy’s shoulder in a gesture of comfort, one not (astoundingly) really a lie. What he does not expect is that the Jedi Padawan wraps him in a hug with that arm, near desperately drawing him close and enfolding him in an embrace of shoulder, neck, and head, much (Sidious thinks) as he might his mother these days, except probably for their hands still clasped, an unlikely awkwardness. Anakin’s nose is pressed to the Sith’s now bent forehead, and a tear falls onto his temple. 

This is... excessive, and inconvenient, and bizarrely inevitable.


	3. Chapter 3

ULTIMATELY ANAKIN WAITS until his eighteenth birthday, or so he says, so that there is “no potential inconvenience for you”. 

“Please, Palpatine, _let me_ ,” he wheedles, six feet and some odd inches of still emotional humanity, warped by nine years with the Jedi and affected as well by Palpatine’s influence. Palpatine blames the Jedi, for the perpetuation of the crush, though this is rather silly. Had his own libido been more insistent on fulfillment beyond his hands, he surely would have acted on ...lust for someone. Someones. Instead of scattered and halfhearted adolescent experiments trying to discover, necessarily without the context of the relationship most beings wanted to impose upon it, why the galaxy went so mad for sex.

“My dear boy, this is...inappropriate,” a phrase with a peculiar air of being almost a benediction, despite its content.

Anakin Skywalker, Jedi knight, raises his hand to the Chancellor _of the thrice-damned Galaxy_ , and waits (somehow) for a moment, until that small, largely silenced instinct of the man who once was a peculiarly devilish boy, to flinch away from a raised hand, _but not overtly, not to upset the angry parent ...or master_ , is quite quashed and stilled. He ruffles Palpatine’s thinning hair, which serves as a reinforcement to the man of the conviction that this is ridiculous and will be regretted by both parties and…

Sidious, ironically, stops this; the Sith may choose to be tender if they damn well please, even when this will imperil Anakin’s future, even when it risks entangling him himself in feelings that they can ill afford. There is also a part of him, one he often endeavors to pay no mind to, that wants to shift the manipulable boy out of focus and see him only as the nexus of the Force, for which worship (but of the kind a slave will have had little enough of, and not as some expected hero, but for whatever he chooses to do) is a proper response.

If he stopped thinking of the boy as the Sithari, and only as the Lord Vader he shall (Sidious swears it) be, it would only interrupt this affection Palpatine wants despite himself. What form said affection takes is negotiable; he could settle just now for spooning the boy or sitting together and chastely holding hands, pressing skin to skin. But he can also imagine (though he cringes away from the thought) Anakin at glorious climax, riven with waves of pleasure and gasping in unadulterated awe. 

Perhaps it is for that image, at that point in the sequence of thoughts, that Palpatine yields, but yields by placing his own hand alongside at the tiller.

* * *

Nevermind being of two minds, Anakin is of at least three or four on this matter, but his libido is pressing one in particular towards the top, one that says Palpatine is peculiarly kind to Anakin, the sort of kindness in listening intently to him, that he glimpses in other people’s intimate experiments (Jedi being forbidden relationships), and that if the man did not want this sort of attention, he shouldn’t go flaunting his grace and power and fine grooming all in front of Anakin. The probably-Chosen-One feels starved for this sort of tenderness.

(He vaguely remembers Mom hinting at something about respecting people’s wishes, but it has been many years, and the Jedi aren’t that invested in examining features of agreements. Every sentient being in the galaxy agreed by dint of being born to fall under the Jedi’s policing arm, and if they disagreed, well, that was one more unfairness in a life full of many of them.) 

He leans in and presses his lips to the older man’s, and Palpatine responds, with a sort of careless care, and what seems like little more experience than Anakin himself. 

“We should go to your bedroom,” Anakin states--he knows the line is appropriate, even if he has no grace in delivering it, because he is hungry to know this and to… to pleasure Palpatine and maybe himself, in this language he has only began to faintly understand.

Says his would-be-lover “Isn’t it a bit early for that?” with a tone of faint amusement that is both teasing and true. 

“This might be our only chance,” he says into the parchment skin beneath Palpatine’s ear, above the forbidding collars of the robes of state. 

Palpatine looks faintly both saddened and angered by this, when Anakin looks back at his face, but that he lets it show on his face at all is only thanks to their closeness. “Very well, dear Anakin.”

Quite frankly, the other sides of Anakin are frightened, for he hadn't thought his pushing would really amount to anything, but he has never been one to stop for fear. Otherwise, he might never have gotten off Tatooine.

* * *

IT IS NOT A ROLE HE HAS taken on much before, but Palpatine really, if they _are_ doing this (and will they regret it) _should_ be seductive here, in the more usual sense and more genuinely than he has before, with various important personas not terrifically interested in him in particular. Anakin is interested in him, and is Anakin. That makes it hard, as does the fact that, as he never quite got round to politically whoring himself, he’s not quite sure how to husband the thoughts he is having to summon interest, so as not to appear too eager. (He vaguely recognizes that this is a problem more usually associated with women, at least given the fact that it is not brakes he is tending, rather an engine to be stoked, not _too_ fast. But this level of intimacy, even now, even with Anakin, has some power to frighten him.)

In any case, he does not rush things, makes of even undressing them both a slow and sensuous production. If he can continue winning Anakin by careful applications of affection and hints of freedom, he sees little need to dole out any punishment himself. Let the Jedi do the discipline for now. 

Had he spent more time with the native religion of Naboo, he might compare this strange balancing of reverence and direction to teaching some god, but as is he thinks of the Force more than gods and would rather not contemplate whether it in and of itself has any use for sexual pleasures. 

Anakin is eager, even now, and retains gentleness tempered by that aggressive curiosity. After a second kiss (and how sweet a one), he kneels, and gives a plethora of kisses to his friend and would-be-master and admirer's thighs and belly, before taking his half-hard length into his mouth, quickly teasing it to a properly erect state and never asking permission or direction.

* * *

He never expected that Palpatine would be ...he finally settles on the word wrecked, by Anakin's surely amateurish efforts. And (not that he'd thought ahead that much), he had figured things might not be reciprocated; they weren't always, in the fantasies of Padawans, the sharing of which barely included Anakin. 

But no, the older man's face goes awestruck and melancholy and tender, and he does everything to Anakin which has been done to him, and a bit, though not a great deal more. Anakin Skywalker, the bold hero, doesn't quite want to put coarse words to the details, never mind if it's not quite _mind-blowingly_ good (given he's completely inexperienced), and he wants that as a private secret, between the two of them, that he will never utter or convey to another person. 

What he thinks might almost be better, though, is being gathered in each others' arms afterward; being pleasure drunk doesn't leave room for the regret that arises every time (not often) he tries to snuggle with Obi-Wan. Though of course, this would not be appropriate in the Chancellor's office, and even the Chosen One the Jedi dislike giving favors to probably shouldn't, properly, embrace him there. At least not frequently.

* * *

They do not repeat that night, in the years that follow, because (Anakin thinks) it is too good. Would give them too much power to be allowed by others, but also no one could possibly grant him (or, he begins to vaguely suspect, Palpatine) a blithe and companionable existence without exacting a great price. 

Also because (and Palpatine knows this; Anakin tells him as soon as they return, along with the massacre, only thinking twice afterward--instinct told him he should disclose it) Anakin marries Palpatine’s once queen, and a war begins. 

He remains a certain kind of in love with Palpatine (and a different certain kind of in love with Padme, worshipful queen, that new best third friend outside the Jedi) but it is not something he dares to acknowledge. He thinks sometimes he is broken in that, for everyone seems to be in love with something else, greater than them (that is probably how he defines being in love)--Obi-Wan with the Force, and Mace Windu and Padme Amidala both (and how differently!) with the Republic. Palpatine, even, though if asked to say exactly what the man’s other great love was, he could only guess that he might call it “justice”.


	4. Chapter 4

When he is half-aware and regaining himself from a hopeless, smoky and sulfurous fog of pain, Anakin--no, Vader--tries to run a sort of self-check on his brain.

How to repair a droid--well, he remembers he has neither of his own hands now, which might incidence difficulty

How to navigate...he thinks he remembers, but it will have to wait until he has at least a datapad, or writing utensils, or even a stick and a patch of dirt, if not a ship, because with a clouded mind he cannot keep enough elements in memory.

His scientific education, gravity and electricity and ...magnetism. 

No. It hits him like a minor electrical current, enough to hurt but not harm, and uncomfortably compelling. The memory of thinking of Palpatine as part of a tripod--it was wrong. 

They are a dipole magnet, whether because they represent more than themselves or simply with their inner nature. Never one without the other, hopelessly linked ("There are no magnetic monopoles!" calls the teacher in his memory), influence circling back onto and into them--

He breathes deep at that and his vision goes black with the pain, now unaccustomed movements of... yes, the diaphragm (must be) disturbing the stillness of skin that yields only a warm thrum of hurt. 

Best not to think on that.

* * *

Months later-- 

well. perhaps only barely two, but they felt as aeons--now he talks, thinks like some chivalrous knight, because there is no longer the bursting awareness of the Force, dimmed with pain and painkillers, robbed of its weight of fear by the unthinkable happening and his passing through it, surviving. And there is no longer the ever present itch of attempting a conformity he cannot attain; he must (and only) metaphorically grit his teeth and accept the mantle of villain, of fallen, of monster. 

And yet his morals are not gone. They *will* give order to the galaxy, an order denied it by the pompous Jedi Council and the chaotic Senate. 

...anyhow, he what feels like finally reports to the new Emperor as Darth Vader, no longer the boy yelling at the injustice of losing one of his few beloved. Anakin Skywalker, Hero with No Fear (but what fears!), is deeply buried in his psyche, and will not be let out.

* * *

He offers himself to his Master, now, the one he had loved, because he thought they had enjoyed it the once, and even though he can't do much sexually any more (in that, at least, he is very much more droid than man, though perhaps it is also the continued dosing of pain medicine), the worship of his scant and monstrous salvation is a worthy sacrifice unto benediction. Even if the logistics of breathing while he does it will be difficult.

"shhhh," Sidious slurs from under the bedcovers, lying staring at the wall. As if they must be discrete for some reason! His face is pained, though this is mostly evident in his eyes.

"You cannot--I cannot--" there are tears on the Emperor's disfigured face, that make him very obviously an old man. Yet it is the old man Anakin-- _Vader_ adored, and not for his power either. For the permissive nature of their confidence, for encouraging words and tender touches. 

"You cannot want me now," Sidious finally says in a hoarse voice that brokenly hints at hysteria, gesturing to his face, running his own arthritic hand down the folds, just barely grazing them. Anakin, the boy Jedi, numbly ponders that his Padawan peers, if they knew of the Sith, would once no doubt have taunted the man as "Darth Hidious".

In the silence there is only the rhythmic breathing in his helmet, which probably sounds different outside it, but he knows is audible. Until he says, striving for suitable tone, "My own youth and beauty is wasted, now. I could not condemn."

"But I cannot bear to look at you and know that much--pain and pride and pleasure commingled," the tone is as a formulaic refusal in a drama, and only hints at an ironic contempt for himself, whether due to the emotion or to his involvement in what the sight of Anakin-- _Vader_ no doubt evokes.

Silence again. _hoo-pa, hoo-pa_

Palpatine sighs, and puts the hand with which he never offers anyone benediction (cannot, as Emperor, would not, as Sith), though it feels it now, on Vader's (there.) shoulder.

"My boy," he says (it takes Anakin back.) "come and sit up with me; I cannot sleep anyhow."

And so it is, the Galactic Emperor directing his positioning, that Darth Vader ends up seated upright on a too-plush crimson sofa (upholstered in plain smooth fabric) with Palpatine's legs draped across his, the older man's ...buttocks on the sofa and his torso propped against the pillow sitting by the arm.

Vader cannot really sleep outside his new oxygen chamber, and Palpatine remains silently conscious for most of the time (drifting off in fits and starts) until the fourth hour, when he finally passes into sleep. But they sit there, and after a few minutes Palpatine grasps his hand, prosthesis though it is, and holds it as he reclines in a clearly haunted meditation.

**Author's Note:**

> The dynamics are not exactly those of your prompt (things went in a slightly different direction), but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway.


End file.
